Product Description

TEARS OF THE BLACK TIGER takes a journey back to a lost past the heroic years of Thai genre cinema when influences from Hollywood and everywhere else were subsumed into rollicking Thai melodramas for an audience of avid fans. Sasanatieng s film is a brilliant pastiche of vanished themes styles and characters almost all of them easily recognizable as variants on the prototypes from other popular cinemas. But the film s project is not simply nostalgic. Sasanatieng uses the tricks and tropes of film style from the 1960 s- iris shots wipes obvious back-projection but combines them with a startling modernist approach to color and storytelling. The result is not only unique in Thai cinema but also an entirely new way of looking at genre entertainment. TEARS OF THE BLACK TIGER offers nostalgia as future shock.When Dum a young peasant boy falls in love with Rumpoey the daughter of a wealthy family they vow that whatever happens they will one day be together. When they meet again ten years later their rekindled passion is thwarted by the murder of Dum s father by outlaws and by Rumpoey s betrothal to a smooth-talking police captain. Dum soon transforms himself into the gunslinging bandit Black Tiger in order to infiltrate the gang who murdered his father. Fate will reunite the lovers one more time but will they be able to continue their romance? Or will tragedy strike again?Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: ACTION/ADVENTURE Rating: NR UPC: 876964000673 Manufacturer No: 10067

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #70893 in DVD
• Brand: MAGNOLIA FILMS
• Released on: 2007-04-24
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, Thai
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish
• Dubbed in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 110 minutes

Features

• TEARS OF THE BLACK TIGER takes a journey back to a lost past the heroic years of Thai genre cinema, when influences from Hollywood and everywhere else were subsumed into rollicking Thai melodramas for an audience of avid fans. Sasanatieng s film is a brilliant pastiche of vanished themes, styles and characters, almost all of them easily recognizable as variants on the prototypes from other popular

Amazon.com
Imagine John Ford (The Searchers), Jean-Luc Godard (Weekend), and John Waters (Pink Flamingos) collaborating on an insane 1950s melodrama, drenched in succulent Technicolor--rose-petal reds, turquoise blues, saffron yellows, and Pepto-Bismol pinks--and you're just barely encompassing the cinematic delirium of Tears of the Black Tiger. This fever dream of a movie features rival gunslingers, a poor farmboy and the daughter of a wealthy landowner, a murdered father, bloody revenge, a forced marriage, and a half-dozen other cliches stitched into a preposterous yet weirdly engaging story. But the story isn't the point; director Wisit Sasanatieng takes every opportunity to dive into a different style or device, ranging from delicate shots of a lovely girl in a mint-green gazebo to spewing gore and full-on battle with machine guns and grenade-launchers. The sets are often blatantly theatrical, the lighting exaggerated, and the acting ranges from wooden to maniacal. In short, this Thai movie is like nothing you've ever seen, born of a deep moviemania and unbridled chutzpah, and you owe it to yourself to watch it. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Disappointing transfer
Saw this at the theater and was wowed away by how visually stunning this film is. I was excited to order it on DVD, and received it today, but was disappointed by how low quality the transfer is. The colors are dull and blurry compared to what I saw on the big screen. Total let down because the visuals make the movie.

THAI MOVIES ARE ENTHUSIASTIC, UNINHIBITED, DRAMATICALLY BEAUTIFUL.
That's because Thailand is all that, and much more.

The five stars are because I love Thailand. If I could, I've have given it ten stars. But because of barrage of melodramatic - okay, corny - cliches, the cacophony of tossing everything familiar film trick into a cinematic blender, imposing the unique Thai logic, making incredible production gaffs first year film students would avoid and the really misleading hype of its marketing, I just can't. It's not clever parody nor artistic exaggeration; it's just seems an adolescent idea of such. Then too, Amazon just wouldn't allow 10 stars anyway.

Well, 'Mai Pen Rai'. Support this movie as a homage to Thai cinematic growing pains. That Thai phrase means 'Never mind, it doesn't matter'.
Oh, and the art direction, a Thai forte, is real pretty.

Better to recommend THE LEGEND OF SURIYOTHAI. It's as colorful and imbibed with Thai spirit, but less of a parody in a blender. And more informative re Thai history, too.

Snazzy "western"
The previews were intriguing, and the movie is so expressive it is surprising. I know the cultures of the Pac-Rim are old and in many ways sophisticated, but the adapatation of their esthetic to our genre is fun, cool and engaging. And, damn, the story is not half bad! It is not entirely a spoof, just that those cultures stylize for high esthetic goals, and this movie gets that treatment in the most unexpected dimensions of color, slow-motion, sound, and close-ups. Too good to not have in the collection!